Chief executive Marko Bogoievski said the Infratil Energy Australia sale was for a net $670 million, and with two other smaller asset sales, resulted in a gain on sale of $343 million.
''The recent asset sales have resulted in Infratil having over $600 million on deposit with its banks and low net gearing,'' he said in the market update yesterday.
While part of the $600 million was earmarked for investment, $84 million would be returned to shareholders in a 15c special, fully imputed dividend, plus a further $36 million is targeted for an on-market buyback of shares.
Both the special dividend, and the increased ordinary dividend of 4.5c, will be paid on December 15.
Operating earnings, excluding the asset sales, was down from $79.8 million to $78 million.
Infratil's after tax profit was $399 million, up from $230 million a year ago.
After adjusting for asset sales, the full year consolidated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and full value guidance range remained unchanged - in a range of between $475 million to $500 million.
Craigs Investment partners broker Chris Timms said Infratil's result was ''broadly as expected'', given Z Energy and TrustPower had already reported, and were ''modestly worse'' than what was expected.
He said Infratil believed it could move to a 40% geared position and be sustainable, with about $400 million of net debt it is at present in a 20% geared position.
''Infratil is fine tuning its balance sheet, debt being cheaper than equity,'' Mr Timms said.
''While the distribution is light in this context, the company indicates that further distributions could be made if investments aren't found over time,'' he said.
Forsyth Barr broker Andrew Rooney said the focus of the result was always going to be on the dividends following the Australian retailer sale.
''While some may be disappointed with the size, there is a special dividend, fully imputed, of 15c per share, in addition to the ordinary dividend of 4.5cps, up from 3.75c a year ago.
He noted the on market buy-back of shares was $37 million, which was the equivalent of 12 million shares and 2.2% of Infratil's market capitalisation.
''Infratil has performed well and as we have seen with other companies announcing capital returns, there will probably be a short-term [share price] rally,'' Mr Rooney said.
Infratil shares following the announcement.
However, Mr Rooney said the upside for the stock started to get more limited, unless Infratil returned even more cash to shareholders, which it may do in 2015-16 if it was unable to find anything appropriate to recycle its assert sale cash into.
